Hikaru Utada | Artist
Hikaru Utada aka "Utada" is a Japanese-American singer songwriter and record producer, born 1983 in Manhattan, New York. Perhaps best known by international audiences for writing and performing theme-songs to Square Enix and Disney's Kingdom Hearts video game series, they are considered to be one of the most influential and best-selling musical artists in Japan. Utada was born in New York City to Japanese parents, record producer Teruzane Utada and enka singer Keiko Fuji. They began to write songs at an early age and traveled to Tokyo as a result of their father's job. Adopting the stage name Cubic U, they signed with Toshiba-EMI to release their English-language debut album, Precious (1998). their second album and Japanese-language debut, First Love (1999), leaned further toward R&B and dance-pop influences; it was a commercial success, becoming Japan's best-selling album of all time. The Singles "Automatic", "Time Will Tell", and "Movin' On Without You" were hughly successful, while the album sold two million units in its first week in Japan, topped the Oricon chart for six non-consecutive weeks, and sold six million more units throughout the rest of 1999. Utada's discography currently lists 10 studio albums, and an excellent live album covering their 2024 concert tour. Standout albums include Deep River (2002), Ultra Blue (2006), Fant么me (2016), One Last Kiss (2021), Bad Mode (2022), and Hikaru Utada Science Fiction Tour 2024 (2024). As a J-pop artist, Utada brings an American-inflected R&B vocal style to a mix of ballads, bouncy dance-pop, and standard pop songs. Utada's official website cites 15 musicians and composers as their favorite artists: Freddie Mercury, Cocteau Twins, Nine Inch Nails, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, 脡dith Piaf, Chick Corea, the Blue Nile, Bj枚rk, Lenny Kravitz, B茅la Bart贸k, Mozart, Jeff Buckley, Yutaka Ozaki, and Hibari Misora. They have also mentioned growing up as a fan of Madonna, Sting, and the Cure. By the end of the 2000s, Utada was deemed "the most influential artist of the decade" in the Japanese music landscape by The Japan Times. They are one of Japan's top-selling recording artists of all time with over 40 million records sold. In 2021, Utada became one of the first Japanese figures to publicly identify as non-binary.
Artist Website: en.utadahikaru.jp
Featured Albums: Hikaru Utada
Related Artists: Utada, Cubic U